Aaaaand, we're back from Spring Break! And, exciting... We came back to chicken eggs in an incubator! We love peering through the windows to investigate the eggs, but there's really not much to see on the outside yet. Thankfully, Madame has an app that allows us to observe what's happening inside the egg and track the chicks' progress and growth each day. Also a fun feature of the app - the AR chicken that it can place in random spots around the classroom. We like to try to "pet" it, or photobomb it. We are so excited for the chicks to hatch! Madame has even told us that she'll let us work together in small groups to name each of them. We went on our first ice skating trip this week! It was a gorgeous day for a walk to the rink, and the cool air of the arena actually felt so refreshing when we arrived. For some of us, this was our first time ever putting on skates! We met the task with such determination and perseverance. Madame was very proud of us all! We can't wait to go again next week! We are beginning Term 3 with a much more targeted focus on writing. Every day, Madame has us write out one sentence or correct the errors in a pre-written phrase. This is separate from our journal writing where she gives us a lot more creative freedom and has us focus more on fluency and content output. In these short, daily exercises, Grade 2s are working toward spelling mastery (Grade 1s are still working on "phonetic spelling"), and we are all working on using capital and lowercase letters in appropriate places, spaces between words and periods at the end of our sentences. After just 5 days, we are already noticing improvements! After our enthusiasm about the Van Gogh lesson before Spring Break, Madame was excited to get going with another art history lesson. This week's focus was on Leonardo da Vinci. "And you know what's SO cool...?! Leonardo da Vinci was the namesake of one of the Ninja Turtles... in fact all of the Ninja Turtles are actually named after Renaissance artists!"... "You know... Leonardo?... the Ninja Turtle...!" *Blank stares* Madame broke into the Ninja Turtle theme song (with a little accompanying dance, of course) to try to jog our memories, then looked at us with a hopeful smile. The confused silence was so thick that we could hear our classmates blinking. So for anyone born after the 80s, here's a helpful info-graphic... We learned about how da Vinci was from Italy ("it looks like a boot!") during a time called the Renaissance, which is actually a French word that means "rebirth". It was a time when people were learning and discovering all kinds of new things, and artists began making art that looked so realistic it could almost be a photograph! Da Vinci became very famous for his painting of the Mona Lisa because it looked so real! We learned about some of the techniques he used and practiced using a pencil to make different types of scribbles, varying the pressure we used while scribbling. Then we did our very own Mona Lisa "paintings" (using oil pastels), trying out some of the techniques we learned. We also learned that da Vinci was not only an artist, but a famous inventor, as well. But he kept all of his ideas top secret in his notebook by using a technique called "mirror writing" - you could only read it if you held it up to a mirror! We had fun trying out this strange way of writing, and coming up with our own ideas for inventions! Extra photos... More incredible perler bead art by Nathan and Callen...
Happy Spring Break!! We definitely went out with a "bang"! So much happened this week that it's going to be difficult to condense it all! It was "la semaine de la francophonie" (Francophone week - a week celebrating French-speaking culture around the world), so the whole school enjoyed a variety of celebratory activities! Each class took on a different French-speaking country to research. Ours was Burundi!...a tiny African country that is rated among the poorest countries in the world. We learned to identify what continent it was on, where it was located in Africa, and many interesting facts about it. Some of us tried to replicate how the people there carry things on their heads. We realized it wasn't as easy as they made it look in the documentary video! Other fun French-inspired activities throughout the week included the poutine truck, a French read-aloud from the librarian, and not one... not two... but THREE assemblies! We celebrated the different French-speaking countries around the world for the first assembly, learned about Métis culture and dance in the second, and for the third, we had our favourite - a special visit from "the Maple Man"! Some volunteers came from PMSS on Thursday to help run outdoor games in French, as well. We played pétanque (bocce), had a potato sack race, battled it out in a game of Capture the Flag, and did "egg" and spoon races. The firefighters even joined us! The PAC also treated us to a schoolwide French-themed picnic with croissants, cheese, grapes, and sparkling grape juice. And later, we participated in a "Tintamarre" - an Acadian tradition of marching around making noise with homemade instruments and other noisemakers. We had fun making the instruments ourselves from random materials we brought from home or found around the classroom. And in other cultural-related news, we had a First Nations-inspired drumming circle in the forest this week. With permission from Lilly, the Katzie composer of the song we learned, we did a French land acknowledgment and then enjoyed playing and singing her song in Hul'q'umi'num'. Afterward, we had a blast playing in a new forest location! A few weeks ago, Mme Kate's class did a random act of kindness for us by making each of us some special drawings. Our only instruction was to pay it forward! Well, with everything going on in February, it took us awhile to actually complete the task of paying it forward. We finally did it this week! We all did our best work on a pop-up surprise heart monster drawing and brought them to Ms. Sandhu's K/1 class to share the love. They were so pleased to receive our gifts! And finally, in Science, we loved doing a Skittles experiment with water. We hypothesized about which temperature of water would make the colours from the Skittles bleed the most/the fastest. Most of us guessed that it would be the hot water and to be honest, this is what Madame expected, as well. But strangely, the cold water won! This was a great chance to talk about variables in Science that can change our expected results: - the "cold" water was not that cold - it was straight from the tap - Madame didn't pour equal amounts of water on each plate - she accidentally over-filled the cold water plate and probably under-filled the hot water plate We brainstormed modifications that we could make to have the experiment be more accurate: measuring out the exact amounts of water before pouring them onto the plates, making sure the plates were laying completely flat, etc. Then we tried redoing the hot water plate with these things in mind. Sure enough, the hot water plate was twice as fast the second time. Extra photos... "Look, Madame! We're both wearing a nickel!" Nathan's 3D perler bead masterpiece!
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